News from Ferndale School District

Mountain View to offer Ferndale Fries as pilot farm-to-school program (Bellingham Herald Article)– “Students at Ferndale's Mountain View Elementary School will soon be treated to freshly baked potatoes from northwest Washington as part of their school lunch. On Jan. 27, the french fries and tater tots at the school are being exchanged for locally grown potato wedges, as part of a pilot farm-to-school project. ‘This is something that's good for the students and it's good for the local farmers,’ said Alex Singer, Ferndale School District's Food Program director. ‘We have students who may not have ever had french fries that weren't frozen before.’”

Calling all Spielbergs!

Here’s a chance to have fun, be creative, learn about good food for your school cafeteria and win some money. The Real Food Video Contest (details here) could earn you $1.000 for your school project. Not to mention an all expenses paid trip to the 5th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Detroit, Michigan, May 17-19, 2010. Make a video that tells what real food means to you and your community and submit it before March 29th. Then visit the site to vote for the best one and wait for the announcement of the lucky winner on April 13th.

A reason to celebrate - over and over again

Orcas Island has hit on a great idea: the Celebratory Lunch for the Farm to Cafeteria Program. Different island gourmands prepare a special lunch once a month featuring wholesome local food, mostly made from scratch. Professional and amateur local chefs sign up for the month they want and it's practically become a regular feature at the school cafeteria. The students love it! Who wouldn't? It's a great idea that could be adapted by other communities. Read about it in Bullwings

In praise of the rutabaga!

There is a delightful article in today's New York Times singing the praises of a little known vegetable: the rutabaga. Melissa Clark tells of first resisting and then being totally enchanted with this vegetable. She suggests roasting as the best way to cook it - and isn't roasting the best way to cook so many vegetables? Here in Washington we grow rutabagas, so if you haven't tried one lately, first read this and then try them again. You're in for a treat.

HealthierUS School Challenge

The USDA has started a challenge for schools that are trying to offer a healthier environment at school. They are awarding four levels of superior performance based on the promotion of good nutrition and physical activity.
The Food and Nutrition site has information, tools and resources about success stories, grants, fact sheets, FAQs and more.
The online application is available now.

Have you heard about the FoodHub?

What's that? Their site, live November 2nd, defines it as a virtual pantry for Pacific Northwest food buyers and sellers. This is an Ecotrust project made possible in part by funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation, Bullitt Foundation, Newman's Own Foundation, USDA's Rural Business Enhancement Grant (RBEG) program, the Annenberg Foundation, Eugene Water & Electric Board, Farm Aid, Bill Healy Foundation, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Russell Family Foundation, and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. They are holding informative sessions this month to introduce the new system and get feedback from everyone. Here are some of the questions they anticipate being able to answer in these sessions:

• How is FoodHub different from or similar to other resources such as the Puget Sound Food Network, FarmsReach, MarketMaker, or EProduceSales? Where are the synergies between and among these various tools and you?
• Who is the intended audience for FoodHub? What problem was it created to solve? What is its geographic scope? Who are the partners and funders behind FoodHub?
• Who is Ecotrust? Didn’t they used to produce a Guide to Local and Seasonal Products; whatever happened to that?
• How will FoodHub help me serve my constituents? What is its larger vision/mission?
  What role can I play in influencing FoodHub’s features and services so that it best serves me and my constituents? How will it evolve over time?

Everyone is more than welcome to come. Here are the dates and locations for the sessions:
Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 10-11:30 am
Sodo Park by Herban Feast
3200 1st Avenue South, Suite 100
Seattle, WA 98134

Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 2:30-4:00 pm
Skagit Valley Food Co-op
Community Meeting Room, 3rd Floor, Room #309
202 S. 1st St.
Mt. Vernon, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Grand Central Baking (Pioneer Square, business office)
214 1st Ave S
Seattle, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 1:30-3:00 pm
Shorebank Pacific
2720 3rd AveSeattle, WA 98121

As space is limited at all venues, please RSVP to Lola Milholland at lola@ecotrust.org.

Why we need to change school food

The San Fransico Chronicle published an article last week that really underlines the problems with the state of our schools' cafeterias. It highlights the testimony of Chef Anthony Geraci before a congressional panel Thursday. He recounts his experiences as a school chef and why we need to change how we feed children at school and why we need school gardens.
The experience "forever changes the way a kid looks at food," said Geraci. He says that too many children only know fruit as a flavor, that they have not experienced fruit as an actual food. Schools don't have kitchens and cooks, childhood obesity and related diseases are soaring, and we are paying to process our school food in ways that add expense in both dollars and results. The food that is given to children at school is often over processed and unappetizing leading into this vicious cycle of bad eating habits and higher costs.

What do we teach in the school cafeteria?

At School Lunch Talk there is an interesting article about how school lunch is approached in France. There, food is part of a larger picture that includes making good choices, proper eating habits and good manners. The author, Deborah Lahmann, suggests that this is a way to use lunch time as an educational tool for nutrition, preparation techniques and cultural heritage whereas the typical American approach is only to use school lunch as a re-fueling time before getting back to class. She advocates making food a higher priority, and taking advantage of the cafeteria as another classroom.
A later entry deals with Italy where there is a law that mandates schools and other institutions to use local organic products where possible and to comply with the National Institute of Nutrition. Instead of parents advocating, the state is mandating. An important part of this is that the government is willing to pay, like they are in France, and the price of lunches is subsidized by the city. In fact they pay at least half the cost of every lunch, and even more if the students come from poorer economic backgrounds. Compare that to the US where the government pays much less and the total spent on lunches is significantly less.

Cafeteria Trays

For colleges, ditching the tray may reduce impulsive choices and overeating and encourage students to take fewer sugary drinks, in addition to saving money for foodservice! It also improves the cafeteria atmosphere, making it feel more like home. This article from the New York Times examines the latest college cafeteria fashion and where it's happening.

Many students getting most of their daily nutrition from school meals

If you saw this article by David Sarasohn in The Oregonian you may have been saddened and surprised to learn that many children are only able to get adequate, nutricious food at school.  This illustrates why we need more funds and more programs to help support good food in our schools. 

"When the kids came back from spring break, they were starving," Shelly Drury says. "They wanted seconds, they wanted thirds. My principal was saying, 'We need to cook more food.' " 

If Shelly Drury is at one end of the school lunch pipeline, Tom Harkin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, is at the other. Reauthorizations -- and budgets -- go past the Iowa Democrat, and he has plans. "We'd love to get it up $1 billion a year," said Harkin in an interview earlier this month. "We could use more money. If we want to get better food for our kids, it costs money."

A Proposal to Separate Fast Food and Schools

The New York Times recently featured an article linking the tendency to be overweight with the location of fast food restaurants in a tenth of a mile or one block radius of the schools. 

The study looked at weight rates in teens and pregnant women who lived near such resteraunts and found location to be detremental in both cases. Now Eric Giola, a city councilman from Queens wants to use the California study to ban fast food establishments from opening so close to schools.

"Immediate proximity played a crucial role in obesity, according to the report, the Effect of Fast Food Restaurants on Obesity, by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University. If a fast-food restaurant opened a quarter-mile or more from a school, obesity rates were not affected."

Learning to live healthy

Are the kids in your school talking about salad and raspberry dressing before lunch? That’s what’s happening at Veterans Memorial Elementary in North Naples. This school decided to plant a school garden so the students could plant and grow their own food. The goals, to save money and educate children about healthy food, have been met with enthusiasm on the part of all.
The program was suggested by a mother and seconded by the whole community. The children are proud to raise their own food and are learning good nutrition by living the experience. They get fresh, wholesome food in their cafeteria. The hands-on experience of working in their own garden builds self confidence from achieving through hard work and an understanding of delayed gratification. It is also a godsend economically in times when all school budgets are tight.
According to an article about the school and its program in the Macro Eagle, about 60% of the students chose salad for lunch on the day the reporter visited the school. The school sought advice and partnership in the endeavor from their school district, master gardeners and a local foundation. The children benefit by an increased desire to learn about the science related to growing food, time spent outside working in the garden and healthy food.

Stimulus Package Grant Opportunity for WA Schools to Buy Kitchen Equipment

There’s an exciting current opportunity for schools to get grants to purchase kitchen equipment that can make it easier for them to prepare, store and serve more locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.

One of the big barriers for buying from farms is the lack of equipment and available staff time for preparing, storing and serving fresh food. To save labor cost and time, most buy fresh foods already chopped, diced, shredded and bagged—ready to go straight into soup or onto the salad bar. Many don’t even have the option of a salad bar because refrigeration and salad bar service equipment is too costly. Farms often don’t have equipment or time for processing either, so most school food is ordered through distributors after the food has traveled around for processing and may come from very far away. Using the funds from the stimulus package can help schools who wish to buy direct from farms and do more preparation in-house. This is a great time to contact your local school with a positive message and encourage them to apply for equipment to support them in preparing and serving food from Washington farms! Call your local school and ask to speak to the i-grants administrator, the food service manager at the school or the nutrition director for the district.

The economic stimulus package provides $100 million for school food service equipment grants, which can fund new freezers, salad bars, milk coolers, etc. Priority will be given to school food authorities (SFAs) in which at least 50 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals. Grants will be made no later than June 8, 2009, and the deadline for school districts to apply is May 1st.

For this grant, the definition of eligible equipment is “articles of nonexpendable, tangible personal property with a useful life of more than one year and a per unit acquisition cost of $5,000 (or such lesser amount as the SFA uses when reporting equipment as assets in its financial statements).”

From the USDA Memo on the grant:

“In order to make the most effective use of the NSLP equipment assistance grant funds, when developing the application process, State agencies should incorporate one or more of the following four focus areas:

• Equipment that lends itself to improving the quality of school foodservice meals that meet the dietary guidelines. (e.g., purchasing an equipment alternative to a deep fryer),
• Equipment that improves the safety of food served in the school meal programs. (e.g., cold/hot holding equipment, dish washing equipment, refrigeration, milk coolers, freezers, blast chillers, etc.),
• Equipment that improves the overall energy efficiency of the school foodservice operation (e.g. purchase of an energy-efficient walk in freezer replacing an outdated, energy demanding freezers.
• Equipment that allows SFAs to support expanded participation in a school meal program (e.g., equipment for serving meals in a non-traditional setting or to better utilize cafeteria space)

State agencies may opt to propose alternate or additional focus areas, but must submit the
proposal to FNS for prior approval.”

Some of you may have received a notice about adding a focus area for encouraging local food in this grant. (Wisconsin and Michigan got USDA approval to add this as a 5th focus area: "Equipment that enables Wisconsin schools to use locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.”) We were unsuccessful in getting language added in Washington, simply due to time constraints in getting approval from our Western District USDA office. While it is disappointing not to have this encouragement written into the grant, there is no reason this goal cannot be met within the original 4 focus areas. I know that George Sneller, State Child Nutrition Director, and others at OSPI are supportive of the Washington grown programs in schools.

(The link above goes to the USDA Memo on 2009 Equipment Assistance Grants for School Food Authorities)

I hope this email gives you the information you need to support your school in improving their infrastructure for serving healthy fresh foods, grown in Washington to improve the quality of food served and increase participation in school meal programs.

If you have questions or need advice on approaching your school staff or sharing the message, feel free to contact us here at the WSDA Farm-to-School Program: farmtoschool@agr.wa.gov.

Ann Cooper's Message to Dr. Janey Thornton

Ann Cooper, the chef behind the famous school food reform in Berkeley, CA, has written at Grist.com about the new USDA appointee for Food and Nutrition Service Department, Dr. Janey Thornton. She's not too optimistic about Dr. Thornton's track record as a nutrition services director in Kentucky, but has some recommended revisions the National School Lunch Program:

• Make meals, both breakfast and lunch universal, a system where every child is fed every day.
• Replace the current system of tracking menus by nutrients, to one where the guidelines are based on healthy, delicious balanced meals. These meals should consist in large part of fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains, and should include plant based protein.
• Replace the definition of nutritious food, on which the current system is based, to one that defines and is based on real FOOD. (See full definition below.)
• Raise the federal reimbursement rate to $4.00 - $5.00, based on the cost of living of the geographical area, and dedicate a minimum of $1.75 to be spent on food. Additionally, dedicate at least $1.00 be spent on fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains with a priority placed on procuring regionally produced food.
• Dedicate resources to building or rebuilding kitchens in school districts to accommodate scratch cooking.
• Dedicate resources to set-up a training program to teach school food service workers to cook from scratch.
• Set-up a National Culinary Cooks Corp which allows culinary students to work off student loans by working in K-12 schools.
• Institute hands-on experiential learning in the form of cooking and gardening classes that become a mandatory part of the educational system.
• Dedicate resources to a National marketing campaign to help change children’s relationship to food, so that healthy/delicious school food becomes cool food.
• Underscore the importance of eating healthy food by instituting questions on the SAT tests that highlight sustainable food and agriculture.

Chef Ann Cooper also outlines some general principles that she hopes Dr. Thornton will consider:

Healthful Food is wholesome.
• Includes whole and minimally processed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy, meats, fish, and poultry.
• Contains naturally occurring nutrients (e.g., vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients).
• Is produced without added hormones or antibiotics.
• Is processed without artificial colors or flavors or unnecessary preservatives.

Healthful Food is produced, processed, and transported in a way that prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources, and the cruel treatment of animals. The process of healthful food production:
• Upholds the safety and quality of life of all who work to feed us.
• Treats all animals humanely.
• Protects the finite resources of soil, water, air, and biological diversity.
• Supports local and regional farm and food economies.
• Replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

Healthful Food should be available, accessible, and affordable to everyone.
• Is distributed equitably among all communities.
• Is available and emphasized in children’s environments such as childcare, school and after-school settings.
• Is promoted within institutions and workplaces, in cafeterias, vending machines and at meetings and events
• Is reflective of the natural diversity found in traditions and cultures.

Make the connection with Farmers Markets

An article in the Bend Weekly demonstrates how local schools have been able to take advantage of the farmer's market to find new opportunities to establish relationships with local producers. This may be a fantastic way to connect with local farmers and to learn about what products they will have available shortly. (Bend Weekly)

A letter to Michelle Obama about school food

Dear Mom-in-Chief, a letter encouraging Michelle Obama to make healthy food for kids a priority in her work as First Lady. Debra Eschmeyer, a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and the Marketing and Media Director of the National Farm to School Network, lays out the issues and the current opportunity for improving school meals for kids around the country. The letter, which posted on Civil Eats website, hits so many relevant points that I'm posting it in its entirety:

Dear Mom-In-Chief,

As First Lady you have the ability to set the table for what our nation’s children eat by adding a plank of food justice to your platform. Many ideas have already been sent your way, including starting an organic garden on the White House lawn and appointing a First Farmer. But where should you start?

I request that you make the health of our nation’s children your platform priority. Especially with two growing girls to nurture and nourish, you must understand that we will only be successful as a nation when all children in our country are healthy and well-fed.

You have the support of the 44th President. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was quoted yesterday in the Washington Post explaining President Obama’s goals for the USDA, “The vision is, he wants more nutritious food in schools.” Vilsack went on to depict the role of local foods in that mission: “In a perfect world, everything that was sold, everything that was purchased and consumed would be local, so the economy would receive the benefit of that.”

You have a ripe opportunity to make great strides toward that vision with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which is the federal legislation that establishes the guidelines for our nation’s school meal programs and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Every four or five years, there’s an opening for all of those concerned with the health of our nation’s children to evaluate, defend, and improve the federal Child Nutrition Programs. That time is now as the current Child Nutrition Act expires in September 2009.

With at least 35 to 40 percent of children’s daily eating occurring during the school day, a reformed cafeteria could improve the health and increase the capacity to learn for the 30 million children that eat at school 180 days per year.

When you invited Chef Sam Kass into the White House Kitchen, your spokeswoman said “he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food.” Mr. Kass has spoken out previously on the need to change the school lunch menu by decreasing the high levels of sugar and fat. He’s right.

Earlier this month the results of the latest school nutrition dietary assessment study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association exposed that in the 2004-2005 school year, only 6% to 7% of schools met all nutrition standards. This is unacceptable.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of children between the ages of 6 and 11 were overweight in 2007. In the late 1970s, that number was only 6.5%. The oft-quoted statistic that one in three children born in 2000 will be diabetic in their lifetime (make that one in two if the child is black or Hispanic) demonstrates we can’t wait a moment longer to act.

If you make the health of our nation’s children your priority, you could save countless lives and potentially save us billions of dollars.

Consider the economic stress of diet-induced diseases such as Type II Diabetes, now inflicting youth. The insulin, needles, test strips, blood sugar monitors, doctor’s appointments, etc. take a considerable chunk of change. The average annual expense for a person diagnosed with diabetes is $11,744, of which $6,649 is directly attributed to the disease. Those with diabetes have medical expenses that are 2.3 times higher than those with working pancreases.

Sasha and Malia are fortunate to be eating nutritious local, organic lunches at Sidwells Friends School. This is what your girls ate at lunch on Tuesday, February 10th:

Organic Vegetarian Chili, Carrot Apple Soup, Roasted Local Beet Salad, Salad du Jour, All Natural Beef Chili, Brown Rice, Steamed Zucchini and Grapefruit Slices

The above shows the solution can be delicious. How wonderful that you and the President can provide local, fresh and healthy foods for the First Daughters, but what about kids in the rest of the country? From your previous neighborhood on the south side of Chicago to your new community in Washington, D.C. with the highest childhood obesity rates in the country, the nutritional divide that stymies the development and potential of youth is an open wound.

The average school cafeteria unfortunately operates on the lowest common denominator of cost, not quality. The USDA currently reimburses schools $2.57 for every free lunch it serves and lower amounts for reduced cost and full price meals. This leaves about one dollar to cover actual food costs, once labor and overhead costs are factored in. What do you expect food service directors to feed our kids with on a $1.00?

Thankfully, kids, parents, food service staff, teachers, farmers, school administration, and other community members have a taste for change and have been working to incorporate fresh, local product—no matter the perceived barriers—through what is called “farm to school” programs.

The farm to school movement has not waited for the federal government to make children a priority. There are over 2,000 known programs in 39 states as reported by the National Farm to School Network, a joint project of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition.

Even though I promote from scratch cooking, you don’t have to start from scratch in your platform.

The Child Nutrition Forum, a collaboration of many groups, including, National Farm to School Network, School Nutrition Association, Food Research and Action Center and School Food FOCUS, has a statement of principles that outlines key issues to champion immediately.

From there you can delve into an extensive menu of ideas such as establishing a national farm to school grant program or strengthening nutrition standards for school meal programs.

On February 26, I invite you to attend one of two Congressional briefings on farm to school and hear directly from those working every day for a healthy America.

Fulfill your wish to be America’s Mom-in-Chief by making sure that every child has the nutrients necessary to carry our country forward—now that is a stimulus plan I can believe in.

Sincerely,

Debra Eschmeyer

Debra Eschmeyer is a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and the Marketing and Media Director of the National Farm to School Network and the Center for Food and Justice. She works from her fifth-generation family farm in Ohio, where she continues her passion for organic farming raising fruits, vegetables, chickens, and pigs. Debra's previous non-profit work spans the globe in the humanitarian, conservation, sustainable agriculture, and food justice realms. Most recently, Debra was the Project Director at the National Family Farm Coalition in Washington, DC where she focused on U.S. agricultural policy and food sovereignty initiatives among grassroots domestic and international rural advocacy and social justice networks.

[Thanks to Kelly Horton for the heads-up!]

School lunches and the price crunch, etc.

Food prices are creating challenges for individuals and families, and for those organizations that provide food to vulnerable and low-income communities. Food banks are swamped at the same time they're paying more for food. Schools have had a hard enough time feeding kids on the pennies we toss them through our federal government, and it's getting more difficult every day.

The Virginian-Pilot had an article entitled Rising food prices pinch local school menus about how food prices are affecting Virginia schools, and it's not pretty. For the most part, the schools are having to cut important food items, or raise prices, and as with the whole food system price crisis I can't bring myself to use the argument that maybe it will teach people that food should be expensive when it's causing such hunger and misery in the moment. (hopefully a longer term change will happen as the unsustainability of our system becomes clear to more people, but I'm not giddy to see the difficulties its causing people.) But there are a couple of things in the article that made me think:

Helen Phillips, senior director of Child Nutrition Services for Norfolk schools, said school divisions are taking a hit as well when purchasing disposable supplies, including Styrofoam trays and "meal kits" with a plastic fork, a straw and a napkin.

"Every student that eats every single day gets a meal kit, and they've gone up 18 percent," Phillips said.

To make ends meet, Peterson said, schools also are combining fresh and frozen vegetables, replacing grape tomatoes with less expensive varieties and cutting full-size carrots instead of serving the popular, but more expensive, baby carrots."The name of the game is examining every little cost to determine what makes sense economically," he said. In Suffolk, Williams said he relies on a la carte snack items that meet wellness guidelines - such as reduced-sugar fruit snacks, baked chips and juices - to generate revenue.

Disposable service products and baby carrots are some of my pet peeves about food in general--neither necessary nor environmentally sustainable. I know that labor makes up a major part of school lunch service budgets, and I'm assuming that washing trays is just not in the budget (though I suppose disposable trays could also be about dreaded germs or something). And baby carrots are served because kids will eat them and they come prepared so no one has to wash or cut them. But as food prices soar, will it again become more economical to buy the basics and prepare them in the cafeteria? And will schools make the investment in re-usable utensils and trays, and pay someone to wash them? Oh wait, I just realized--disposable service products are used because individual schools don't have equipment for washing, just as they often don't have the facilities for preparing carrots and other fresh fruits and vegetables. (really, I just realized it and didn't do that for effect, I promise) So not only would there need to be an investment in personnel, there would also need to be some reinvestment in school facilities, and in some cases schools were designed without kitchens from their beginning, so it would be a major project.

I would love to see schools get kitchens and have staff to cook whole foods and use real trays and utensils. So far it's not seen as important in the scheme of skimpy school budgets. We need to consider more carefully the link between food and learning and behavior, and the long-term value to our society that could result from a new food culture and focus on food system citizenship and personal nutrition. Only then does it become an obvious and vital necessity that we fund our school food programs adequately and incorporate education about food and its links to health, rural economies and the environment.

Study finds that school-based nutrition programs reduce numbers of students who become overweight

There's an encouraging study in the April 2008 issue of Pediatrics about the role of schools in overweight and obesity prevention.

For the study, The Food Trust in Philadelphia created a school nutrition policy initiative that was tested in 10 public schools to see how effective school-based nutrition programs (including nutrition policy changes, social marketing and family outreach) can be at influencing overweight and obesity in students in grades 4-6.

Here's the key finding:

The intervention resulted in a 50% reduction in the incidence of overweight. Significantly fewer children in the intervention schools (7.5%) than in the control schools (14.9%) became overweight after 2 years.

The entire study report is available on the Pediatrics website.

Forgive the lengthy post, but I wanted to include the basic information on what school interventions were used. Here's an excerpt from the report:

"The SNPI included the following components: (1) school self-assessment; (2) nutrition education; (3) nutrition policy; (4) social marketing; and (5) parent outreach. Each component is described briefly below. A more detailed description of the intervention is available at http://www.thefoodtrust.org/.

Self-Assessment. Schools assessed their environments by using the CDC School Health Index.13 Each school formed a Nutrition Advisory Group to guide the assessment. Teams included administrators, teachers, nurses, coaches, and parents. After completing ratings on healthy eating and physical activity, schools developed an action plan for change. Schools proposed various strategies, such as limiting the use of food as reward, punishment, or for fundraising; promoting active recess; and serving breakfast in classrooms to increase the number of students eating a healthy breakfast.

Staff Training. All of the school staff in the intervention schools were offered 10 hours per year of training in nutrition education. At these trainings, staff received curricula and supporting materials such as Planet Health4 and Know Your Body,14 as well as nutrition and physical activity theme packets designed to integrate classroom lessons, cafeteria promotions, and parent outreach. Staff attended trainings both across and in intervention schools, giving them a chance to work together as a team and to share ideas with their counterparts in other intervention schools.

Nutrition Education. The goal was to provide 50 hours of food and nutrition education per student per school year, which was based on the National Center for Education Statistics guidelines.15 The educational component was designed to be integrative and interdisciplinary. Its purpose was to show how food choices and physical activity are tied to personal behavior, individual health, and the environment. Nutrition was integrated into various classroom subjects. For example, students used food labels to practice fractions and nutrition topics for writing assignments.

Nutrition Policy. In each of the intervention schools, all of the foods sold and served were changed to meet the following nutritional standards, which were based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and converted from the percentage of calories to grams per serving,16 which is in alignment with information shown on nutrition labels: all of the beverages were limited to 100% juice (recommended 6-oz serving size), water (no portion limits), and low-fat milk (recommended 8-oz serving size). Snack standards allowed 7 g of total fat, 2 g of saturated fat, 360 mg of sodium, and 15 g of sugar per serving. Before these changes, soda, chips, and other drinks and snacks had been sold in vending machines and a la carte in the cafeteria of schools with full-service kitchens. Schools without full-service kitchens did not sell a la carte food items or have vending machines. Schools were matched by type of food service to control for differences in the sales of vending and a la carte items.

Social Marketing. The SNPI used several social marketing techniques. To increase meal participation and consumption of healthy snack and beverage items, students who purchased healthy snacks and beverages or who brought in snack items that met the nutritional standards from home or local stores received raffle tickets. Raffle winners received prizes for healthy eating, such as bicycles, indoor basketball hoops, jump ropes, and calculators. The message "Want Strength?...Eat Healthy Foods," paired with an easily recognizable character, reinforced healthy messages through incentives and frequent exposure. Both the slogan and the character were developed through focus groups with students who were not in the study schools but were of similar age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Family Outreach. Nutrition educators reached family members through home and school association meetings, report card nights, parent education meetings, and weekly nutrition workshops. They encouraged parents and students, on the way to and from school, to purchase healthy snacks. Students participated in the 2-1-5 challenge to be less sedentary (2 hours per day of television and video games), to be more physically active (1 hour per day), and to eat more fruits and vegetables (5 per day). Intervention schools reduced the amount of unhealthy foods sold at parent fundraisers and discouraged parents from sending sweets to teachers at holiday time. One school chose to have a weekly breakfast club with female athletes from a local university."

via Foodlinks America newletter published by California Emergency Foodlink in Sacramento, CA. For archived issues of Foodlinks America, go to: www.tefapalliance.org. To request a free subscription to the newsletter or to submit story ideas, contact Barbara Vauthier at: bvauthier@tefapalliance.org.

Auburn School District Gardens In the News Again

Here's more about Auburn School District Nutrition Director Eric Boutin and his garden and orchard program. As far as we know, it's the first school district in the state to grow food to be served in cafeterias. The garden is also an educational tool--students plant and work in the garden.

Auburn High School Program hopes garden is step in healthier direction.

As for the oft-asked question, "Who will care for the garden in summer?"--it will be tended by students enrolled in summer programs at the school district and served in their summer food program.

2 Angry Moms Coming to Seattle! (on film)

Bastyr University, Whole Foods Market of Redmond and Washington State University King County Extension Farm-to-School Connections Team have partnered to host a FREE screening of the documentary, “Two Angry Moms." Check out the film and the women behind it at http://www.angrymoms.org/.

Details:
7pm, May 1st
Bastyr University Auditorium
14500 Juanita Drive, Kenmore, WA 98028
Free Admission
A panel discussion featuring local nutrition and food service experts will follow the screening.

The film addresses nutrition concern issues surrounding the food served in school cafeterias across the country and offers strategies for overcoming roadblocks to replacing unhealthy school lunch menus with nutritious meal options. A conversation about how to bring nutritious meals and fresh local food into school cafeterias will follow the screening. The panel discussion will include:

Anita Finch, Seattle Public Schools
Barb Lloyd, Edmonds School District
Elise Hart, Parent, Laurelhurt Elementary Nutrition Advisory
Committee
Pete Soucy, Bastyr University
Clayton Burrows, Growing Washington
Kerri Cechovic, WA Environmental Counsel

For more information about this event, call 206-205-3206.